16 Engineering hours for LH v1.7

16 Engineering hours for LH v1.7

v1.6 of Legendary Heroes seems to have gone well and we’re now moving on to v1.7. I’m not sure what the rest of the team has in store for that (it’s Kael’s team, I’m just a floater). But I’ve got 16 engineer hours of my own time for v1.7 and want to make sure every hour is spent well. I don’t know how many of you are interested in the sausage factory side of game development but if you are, this is a good chance to see it in action.

These are what I’m spending those hours on:

Est Hours

Feature

Description

Status

1

Stamp fix

Fix stamp creation for modders, add some new stamps.

Done (1)

1

BattleRank overhaul

Redo battlerank so that the AI can more intelligently make decisions.

Done (1)

1

Leader Update

Updated text and specific conversations per player

Done (1)

1

New Spells

Add new tactical battle spells/abilities

Done (2)

2

AI tactical

Update AI tactical perf

Done (1)

1

Squad size

Increase squad size and test

Done (1)

1

Unrest penalties

Unrest causes bandits to spawn

Done and then undone (was not fun)

1

Eco balance

Update mana/maintcosts/research balance/hero generation

Done (0.5)

1

Wild land menace

Wild lands spawn monsters who go after players, get much worse over time.

As I finish these, I’ll update the chart to let people know. I don’t really get started on this until next week between meetings, accounting, legal, design, software work, etc.

Update 1: Friday, May 30

Finished the first half day working on this. Some of this isn't taking as long as I expected (marked at 0.5 hours in the status).

Update 2: End of day

Okay, I've got 9.5 hours into this. The AI is definitely nastier now with the outpost upgrades. The pathfinding is less annoying for me. I had a hard lock today that I want to put some time into. I don't want this to just be new goodies, I'd like to fix some bugs that people have reported.

I have said this before but it's not specifically mentioned so I will say it again just to be safe. Please make the AI specialize cities better and build most of its troops out of its more advanced fortresses, not out of the villages it just settled. The lack of fortress buffs and city enchantments on its units makes them very easy to kill.

Thanks again Frogboy, you have obviously been really paying attention to us forum users.

For new tactical spells, how about Dispel? You would decide whether it would include strategic spells cast before the battle. But for balance purposes, probably it would remove both negative and positive spells and effects on one unit only, else it might be too strong. Or you could have a fairly expensive global tactical spell that removes all positive and negative spells and effects from all allies and enemies, possibly even including strategic spells that affect combat.

Mass spells that affect a whole army on either tactical or strategic level would be great. I would pay an extra 20 mana for a spell that let me Nature's cloak all of my troops before fighting a drake, for example.

i.e.

Mass slow

Mass haste

Mass courage

Mass web

Mass shrink/growth (could be quite expensive)

If the AI gets more aggressive casting negative city spells, a magic shield that can protect vs such spells would be good, either as a global or essence slot or special building (or make it a special building for conclaves but cost an essence slot for towns and fortresses )

Spawned Bandit numbers/strength should be linked to the size of the city and should overcome the city defenders if the player does not put in some extra.

I totally agree that no XP for heroes with higher level then bandits.

Wild land menace

Wild lands spawn monsters who go after players, get much worse over time.

I also think same as bandits no XP for heroes with higher level then newly spawned monsters.

[ For new tactical spells, how about Dispel? You would decide whether it would include strategic spells cast before the battle. But for balance purposes, probably it would remove both negative and positive spells and effects on one unit only, else it might be too strong. Or you could have a fairly expensive global tactical spell that removes all positive and negative spells and effects from all allies and enemies, possibly even including strategic spells that affect combat. ]

Second this also.

Leader Update

Updated text and specific conversations per player

Leaders should all have unique abilities not selectable by levellling up or selecting race, and they should be different for all. Minor things really not game changing but making them stand apart from each other.

v1.6 of Legendary Heroes seems to have gone well and we’re now moving on to v1.7. I’m not sure what the rest of the team has in store for that (it’s Kael’s team, I’m just a floater). But I’ve got 16 engineer hours of my own time for v1.7 and want to make sure every hour is spent well. I don’t know how many of you are interested in the sausage factory side of game development but if you are, this is a good chance to see it in action.

These are what I’m spending those hours on:

1Update stampsWorld less flat, more interesting

Included in this, are you planning on making additional city tiles in order for cities to take to the landscape around? That would be very interesting.

about the Master Quest, if a player has it's victory condition disabled, the Pit of Despair wildland should not generate into the random map, imo. Also, even if it is selected, it would be VERY cool if you needed to 'unlock' the three gates which results in the 'casting' of the Pit of Despair to rise out of the ground (like Curgeon's Volcano). (kinda brings new meaning to why it's called a 'pit')

Understanding that you only have 16 hours...here are some other items that you don't have posted on your list (maybe some of them are low-hanging fruit?)

1) Has/Will the shift-rotation of city buildings when manual placement is enabled be fixed?

2) With planning to have hero's show up at your capital instead , are you able to make a 'capital' building that is auto-placed when your Sovereign creates the first city and then can be rebuilt elsewhere to move the capital?

Mass spells that affect a whole army on either tactical or strategic level would be great. I would pay an extra 20 mana for a spell that let me Nature's cloak all of my troops before fighting a drake, for example.

i.e.

Mass slow

Mass haste

Mass courage

Mass web

Mass shrink/growth (could be quite expensive)

If the AI gets more aggressive casting negative city spells, a magic shield that can protect vs such spells would be good, either as a global or essence slot or special building (or make it a special building for conclaves but cost an essence slot for towns and fortresses )

Looking forward to the tweaks!

Adding to the spells:

- Fly (I'll also note here that the Air Elemental, while flying, cannot fly over the cascym tiles on both the strategic and tactical maps)

Can you *please* try and keep this generic enough that it works for other terrain spells (Corruption etc) including modded ones.

I would love to see this but I don't think it will happen. The spells are just way to different, they really haven nothing in common. Arcane Monolith, Corruption, and Bloom of Twilight all target very different things.

On this topic I think Meditation is too good. I always get all my mana from it and never bother upgrading my shards. Once you have a few cities with 2-3 essence you get all the mana you need. Putting it down to +1 mana instead of +1 per essence would work.